Hershey Company executives are working overtime trying to diversify their product offerings and grow sales in place like China as a counter-balance to flattened candy sales in the U.S.

Let's wish them success.

Because it appears the leaders of the Hershey Trust Co. - the candy-maker's corporate parent with 81 percent voting power - may need the time and space to ride out a new rough patch that has apparently erupted within and around the board that governs Central Pennsylvania's most-visible charity.

But even before Estey's problems - which appear to pre-date his 2011 hiring by Hershey - became apparent, the state Attorney General Kathleen Kane's office was reprising a years-long investigation into the Trust's governance.

* Violations of new conflict-of-interest language, specifically pertaining to the summer employment of then-Trust Chairman Robert Cavanaugh's son with one of the its investment management firms.

* A failure to take steps to elect new board members with specific professional expertise in issues pertaining to early childhood education and working with at-risk children.

This issue pertains to the board's second function as managers of the Milton Hershey School.

A spokesman for the Trust's board said Tuesday that "discussions are continuing with the Attorney General's office" on all of the above points. But, Kent Jarrell added, "we are unable to get into the particulars."

There are other signs of internal turmoil within the board, which sits at the top of a Hershey pyramid that includes the Hershey Company (think Kisses, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups); Hershey Entertainment & Resorts (think HersheyPark and the Giant Center); and the school School, which the trust and all of its assets exist to serve.

For example, Chief Deputy Attorney General Mark Pacella's letter raises questions about a September 2015 letter from four board members complaining of failures to "effectively discharge their fiduciary duties" to the school and the trust.

It was unclear Tuesday evening if that reference was to board performance, or a structure - devised by Hershey founder and benefactor Milton S. Hershey - that has the same 10 members serving on two distinctly separate boards.

Members who penned that letter did not respond to requests for interviews from PennLive.

Pacella's letter also raises questions about internal allegations of stock trading violations, and "the exclusion of senior executive Trust Company staff from timely access to ongoing developments involving the school and trust."

Jarrell said Tuesday it would be "inappropriate to talk about any internal discussions among the board members."

Kane's office, for its part, declined comment on Pacella's letter.

But one of the trust's leading critics, Ric Fouad, an attorney and leader of an alumni reform group, had no such hesitance.

He said the issues that are outlined in Pacella's letter are the logical extension of a Trust board that Fouad believes is dominated by people who are more interested in preserving power and turf than the fulfilling Milton S. Hershey's mission, and a 2013 agreement entered into by Kane that was too weak to bring about meaningful change.

"It's encouraging that the Attorney General has finally recognized the gravity of the problems at Hershey," Fouad said. "This is an opportunity to finally clean up the mess, and they should do it before more kids are hurt and more money is squandered."

Fouad's group, Protect the Hershey's Children, has long argued the school is under-serving needy children through misguided enrollment policies and a pre-occupation with cronyism and financial empire-building.

Jarrell, the trust's spokesman, pushed back on Fouad's criticisms with numbers.

He noted the Trust has nearly doubled its total yearly investment income over the last 10 years, which is vital at Hershey given trust rules that permit the use of only net investment income to fund school operations.

The combined value of all assets, Jarrell said, is more than $12 billion.

That growth, Jarrell added, has permitted the school's enrollment to grow from 1,200 to 2,000 students, with further expansion in the works.

The original state investigation into the Trust's fulfillment of its mission was launched after charges that the board bought a golf course adjacent to the Milton Hershey campus to bail out one of its members (school leaders note the land is now part of its North Campus expansion plan); that directors' pay had risen well beyond the value of their service; and that the organization was rife with conflicts of interest.

Tax documents filed for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2013 show director compensation ranging from $112,549 to $459,000, though in some cases the numbers may reflect payment for other duties performed for one of the Hershey entities.